EDITORIAL: America lags on rails

In this photo released by China's Xinhua news agency, a high-speed train G802 leaves for Beijing from Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province. China has opened the world's longest high-speed rail line, which runs 2,298 kilometers (1,428 miles) from the country's capital in the north to Guangzhou, an economic hub in the Pearl River delta in southern China. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Wang Xiao)

China last week opened yet another high-speed rail line in its headlong program designed to move its people quickly around the country in the 21st century.

This one is a doozy -- the world's longest high-speed line, at 1,428 miles, now connects the nation's capital of Beijing to Guanzhou, an important economic city in southern China.

With speeds of 186 miles per hour, the new trains will reduce travel time from more than 20 hours to about 8 hours.

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And don't worry about missing your train. Another will be coming along shortly. More than 150 trains are expected to run on the line daily.

So that's 150 trains per day running at 186 mph.

Wow! That's amazing!

But, wait a minute -- why must we be amazed?

As we have previously noted, it's been more than 40 years since Japan put the world's first bullet trains into service. Service there routinely travels at 180 mph.

China actually has one train service that hits 259 mph.

And the opening of the new Beijing-Guanzhou line now brings the total distance covered by China's high-speed railway system to more than 5,800 miles, which is half of what it expects to have in service by 2015.

Amazingly -- no, shamefully -- the United States still doesn't have a true high-speed train.

In New York, state officials are working on a plan to cut travel time for passenger service between Albany and Montreal by one-and-a-half hours. That sounds great until you realize that the goal is six-and-a-half hours, barely faster than 30 mph for the 196-mile trip.

Between Albany and Buffalo, the goal is to bring trains up to an average of 65 mph, competitive with cars on the Thruway, but just a third of the speed by 21st-century standards.

Only last month did Amtrak reach an agreement to take control of the CSX tracks between Poughkeepsie and Schenectady, an arrangement that, at last, will allow those tracks to be expressly purposed for passenger use, rather than for freight.

We are glad to have these New York improvements. But there is a part of us that is less amazed by the new marks being set by China than we are by the mincing steps we tolerate in the United States more than 40 years after the future of rail travel arrived in Japan.